1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for identifying and qualifying sources of data, collecting, filtering and analyzing data and transforming the data into visual images associated with a selected framework that is useful as tool for managers to optimize enterprise performance.
2. Background of the Invention
Since the mid-20th century, the field of business and management has revolutionized business and industry. Beginning with consultants such as Peter Drucker and W. Edwards Deming, numerous authors and consultants have suggested frameworks for analyzing an enterprise to give management insight and provide tools to improve performance through, for example, enhanced clarity of roles, responsibilities, and expectations. Numerous “frameworks” have been suggested since that time, but the lack of systematic approach to gaining insight into all areas of an organization diminishes the usefulness of these frameworks.
Two distinct methodologies are commonly used to measure organizational effectiveness and collect information on the functional performance of business processes: outside business consultants and internal review processes. This approach to gaining insight into an enterprise is disconnected and disorganized.
When performance is measured based on external perspectives from consultants, individuals or a team conduct interviews of key executives in a company, review financials, and compare results to their established methodology. Expertise generated by consultancies is based on soft variables and subjective information provided by the consultancy. The actual methodology of consulting varies widely due to different established practices, varied strategic differences between internal opinions provided within the business community, and different institutional philosophies constructed on a variety of experiences uniquely shaped by the circumstances the individual consultancy encounters during their operation as a functional business. Consultancies produce results based on their varied methodologies and then provide executive recommendations based on their private findings. Typical consulting fees are quite expensive. This makes consultation an unattractive option for business managers unless they are forced into unfortunate circumstances that inhibit their operations or their strategic position is compromised in their own space within their operational market. In addition, the “learning” and recursive benefit that comes from in depth analysis of different organizations inures almost entirely to the outside consultants. Stated differently, the more engagements a consultant takes on the wider their knowledge base becomes. Learning form the best practices of one organization allows a consultant to better advise another organization with regard to benchmarking or best practices. However, the ability to share and benefit from this increased insight is controlled by the outside consultant. Moreover, protection of know how relating to best practices depends on the outside consultant. Organizations would plainly benefit from being able to capture for themselves some of these side benefits of in depth organizational analysis. Likewise, systemized benchmarking (as opposed to human benchmarking) improves the ability to control the dissemination of know how.
Business management might also choose to investigate optimization options by establishing internal review processes. Internal processes that businesses use to conduct performance reviews tend to be broad and disparate. An individual business might use performance reviews ranging from strategic off site based internal executive team evaluations to internal employee surveys. The variance among separate business entities is not of itself problematic. However, it is often the case that an individual business utilizes completely separate methods for collecting information. Initiatives typically target separated issues based on entirely different points of strategy. Data collection and management can also vary greatly. These methods are all disconnected from an overall perspective and lack organized means of comparing the performance of each method. Since these different methods cannot be universalized, it is difficult to examine the strategic importance of the information.
The absence of a systemized approach to data collection limits the ability to use the data to gain enterprise wide insight. Most data collected through consultants and internal review, assuming it is even translated into useful strategic insights for the business, is eventually neglected as of little value beyond the narrow case for collection. The disparate nature of the information means further limits the value of the data gathered in conventional internal review processes. Since there is no existing framework for organizing all of the information, none of the respective pieces of data have any larger meaning for the business. There is no methodology for universalizing the information to the broader implications of the business itself. Generated connect insights is difficult, if not impossible, with disconnected data.
Thus, there remains a need for a system and method for identifying, gathering and transforming useful data into a desired framework.